2012 F1D3 Champion Vitally Petrol, clearly standing on the top step of the podium, with runner-up Ecky Thumpalainen, trying to look serious, and failing dismally.
The results of the official* FIEh?FIA
Max Mosley's preferred option for the location of the new FIA offices in Amsterdam. The FIA (or Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile to give it its full, inexplicably french, name) is an ominous association formed to represent motorists and motoring organisations. Its headquarters are at 8 Place de la Concorde, Paris (ring top bell), coincidentally just up the rue from one of the city's best bordellos. The federation acts as the governing body for a number of motorsport series and championships, mostly in a venal or, if we're feeling charitable, incompetent manner. It should not be confused with the Fédération Internationale de l'Alcosport, which governs Drink-A-Long-A-Grand-Prix almost as badly. Comprising 222 member organisations, the FIA can also boast a Senate, a Court of Appeal and a General Assembly and it wouldn't take a stretch of the imagination to see its activities as part of a sinister plan to get itself recognised as a sovereign state in its own right. It's not a million miles from how Hitler started, that's all we're saying. Its decisions have at times left the FIA open to accusations of favouritism and manipulation and its credibility wasn't helped any by revelations that its married president, Max Mosley, was partial to sado-masochistic orgies involving more tarts than you can fit on one hand. Mosley, seeing no incompatibility between his behaviour and his position, failed to tender the resignation that many were keenly anticipating. They claim to do a lot of work on road safety but we've never knowingly seen any of their campaigns. TIGRA 16v: The tooltip with lowered suspension and a racing windscreen wiper 2012 Formula 1 Division 3 Championship have now been compiled by dotdotdotcomma's team of retentive statisticians, and we can exclusively reveal that Vitally Petrol has won the championship, beating his closest rival and teammate Ecky Thumpalainen into second place by the narrowest of margins.
The F1D3 Championship is open to any Formula 1 drivers whose team failed to trouble the scorers in any particular year. Points are awarded on the usual scale of 25-18-15-12-10-8... and that's as far as it gets, with positions recorded regardless of whether the race was finished, or, with particular reference to Hotflush Racing TeamHISPANIA RACING TEAM
Adrian Campos. Seems like a nice bloke. Having had a fair degree of success in junior single-seaters, Campos Racing made a successful application to move up to F1 as Campos Meta for 2010. The team was only founded in 1998, so team principal Adrian Campos has done a pretty decent job. Campos himself was a Minardi driver for a couple of seasons, which goes a long way towards making him all right by us, and he can clearly handle himself 1 in the business arena as well, having beaten off stiff competition 2 in securing the final F1 slot 3. Campos Meta's application included details of deals they had agreed with Cosworth, Dallara and Xtrac, so that's the engine, chassis and gearbox sorted out, which leaves Campos themselves to contribute just the nut that holds the steering wheel. Or Bruno Senna, as he's better known. However, following a majority buy-out in February 2010, the squad was renamed "Hispania Racing Team" before its inaugural season had even begun, which was (a) good news for the team's future in F1, and (2) an irresistable opportunity to make lots of childish remarks about hot flushes and mood swings. For the 2012 season the team built its own car for the first time, having previously raced adapted Dallara chassis, and this move really did bring about a significant change in the team's fortunes: after avoiding the final place in the constructors' title in 2010 and 2011, the team trailed home dead last in their third year. They were put up for sale towards the end of the season but failed to find a buyer and quietly went out of business. HRT RIP. As a mildly diverting footnote, it may be of interest to learn that the "Meta" part of the team's original name referred to Adrian's passion for metaphysics, in particular the concepts of necessity, possibility and the plurality of worlds and how, in conjunction with Leibniz's theories on alternative realities, they might be used to prove that he could have finished in the points if he hadn't been disqualified from the 1987 Brazilian Grand Prix. 1Fnarr. 2Oik. 3Yip. TIGRA 16v: The tooltip with lowered suspension and a racing windscreen wiper, even started.
2012 was a classic year for F1D3, what with the extended 24-car grid, 18 of whom succeeded in troubling the scorers so comprehensively that only one driver outside the F1D3 teams failed to score, and that was Custard d'Ambrosia, who only competed in one race in a car that not only lost its KERS, but also can't have been in particularly good shape after the way that Roman Fatjohn had been hurling it at every other car on the circuit for the previous dozen races or so.
The season kicked off in Australia with a win for Time O'Clock in the MotherrussiaMARUSSIA
The second incarnation of Virgin Racing, a rebranding instigated when a Russian car maker decided to increase the level of its sponsorship to such an extent that it effectively bought the team. In doing so, it chose to ignore the recent salutary example of Spyker, another supercar manufacturer nobody had ever heard of before its purchase of the former Jordan team and which nobody has really heard of since it sold it again pretty damned quickly.
Changes like this are usually of no great significance to the viewing public but in this case it means that fans will no longer be able to anticipate commentating faux pas, such as "Let's see how this Virgin handles in slippery conditions." For that reason, the name change is a bit disappointing. TIGRA 16v: The tooltip with lowered suspension and a racing windscreen wiper. This was followed by an unprecedented hat-trick of victories for Vitally Petrol, and a similarly extraordinary, but therefore precedented, hat-trick for team-mate Thumpalainen, after which the CateringCATERHAM
After Lotus, there was Caterham; as it was in the 1960s with road cars, so it was in 2011 in F1. Lotus Racing team owner Tony Fernandes, keen to avoid further legal action from Group Lotus, opted to change his squad's name to Caterham, a car manufacturer that he did own. The cars would keep their iconic green and yellow livery but could no longer claim any link with the original Team Lotus. And, we have to say, quite right too. TIGRA 16v: The tooltip with lowered suspension and a racing windscreen wiper duo traded wins in a manner that would have been ideal material for a Hale Report from HHTV News.
But not for long! In Singapore, O'Clock returned to form with an outstanding victory - taking 12th place overall - and thereby giving Motherrussia the coveted 10th place in the actual F1 constructors' championship thanks to the slightly silly way in which the actual FIEh?, in their allegedly infinite wisdom, calculate such things, and despite the fact that Catering were simply miles ahead in the F1D3 points at that, um, juncture.
So, with a return to Petrol and Thumpalainen trading victories, it was therefore simply dulce et decorum when, at Interlagos, Vitally Petrol took a well-deserved win - 11th overall - to seal not only Catering's F1D3 Constructors' championship, but also 10th place overall for the team in the actual standings, as well as his own title as F1D3 drivers' champion, while Thumpalainen's third place behind Charles Pique kept the Russian rather uncomfortably honest, finishing a single point behind in the standings.
And finally, since we are contractually obliged to be mean about Michael BackmarkerSCHUMACHER, MICHAEL
Michael expresses his remorse at having dangerously forced a rival off the track. Again. When he wasn't driving people off the road, ramming other cars, parking in the middle of the track or trying to punch David Coulthard, Michael Schumacher displayed a dazzling talent for finding new ways to disadvatage his team-mate. We're being slightly churlish, of course, but Schumacher's reputation as a driver will forever be coloured by the unsporting manner in which he raced. His first break in F1 came with Jordan at Spa in 1991 and his second with Ferrari at Silverstone in 1999, when he fractured a leg crashing at Stowe. His final F1 drive through the field at Interlagos was a reminder of what his legacy could have been if he hadn't been quite so ready to tarnish it quite so frequently. The wanker. TIGRA 16v: The tooltip with lowered suspension and a racing windscreen wiper in 77% of all news reports, we feel it necessary to point out that in 40% of races in 2012 the pointy-chinned German was roundly beaten by at least one F1D3 competitor, the chump.
Here are the final standings then.
Official* FIEh? Formula 1 Division 3 Drivers' Championship:
1 Vitally Petrol (Catering) 392
2 Ecky Thumpalainen (Catering) 391
3 Time O'Clock (Motherrussia) 314
4 Charles Pic (Motherrussia) 270
5 Pedro Docklands Light Railway (Hotflush Racing Team) 212
6 Narain Karthikeyan (Hotflush Racing Team) 181
From which we think it's pretty easy to work out the constructors' points, as we just can't be arsed.
* This is a lie.
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